Nineteen London councillors defect to Ukip in one year

Defections: Nigel Farage's party is attracting recruits from both Labour and the Tories. Picture: Nigel Howard

Ukip is becoming the “go to” party for fed-up councillors in London’s most deprived boroughs, with 19 defecting to the anti-Europe party in the past 12 months, experts said today.

Election-watchers likened the swing to the surge experienced by the British National Party in the mid-2000s and said it could foreshadow an upset for both Labour and the Conservatives in council elections on May 22.

Fifteen Conservative and four Labour councillors have switched allegiance to Nigel Farage’s party since March last year, according to Ukip.

The defections are concentrated in outer boroughs, with Havering, Hounslow and Barking and Dagenham each now having four Ukip councillors.

Lawrence Webb, who won a by-election in Havering to become the capital’s first Ukip councillor last year, said the defections showed that the party did not just draw its support from “disaffected Tory voters”. All four councillors who have defected from Labour have been in Barking and Dagenham.

Professor Tony Travers, local government expert at the LSE, said: “The BNP surge in 2006 makes it seem likely Ukip can win seats in Barking and Dagenham, and Havering.”

He added: “There is a popular misconception that Ukip draws its support from disaffected Tory voters, and whilst most of those who have joined UKIP in the past 12 months were former Conservative councillors, there have recently been a number of defections from Labour.”

"Ukip could well do harm to Labour in the longer term as much as the Conservatives, because the support base tends to be among the less well-off."

The figures come as a stark warning to mainstream parties ahead of May’s local elections, when around 1,800 councillors will face the ballot box in 600 wards.

Sources within Ukip say the party expects to attract more defectors in the run-up to the poll.

Darren Rodwell, Labour’s election coordinator in Barking and Dagenham, said the defections would make “no difference” to Labour in May. “Ukip is their choice of party because Ukip is the current party of protest, like the BNP before it,” he said.